


The Professor in the Photograph

by ElizaHiggs



Series: The Professor [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, F/M, Friendship, Mentorship, Photographs, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaHiggs/pseuds/ElizaHiggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonks is curious about the professor in Mad-Eye's photograph</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Professor in the Photograph

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after reading the amazing mrstater's old Care of Magical Creatures ficverse, in which Tonks and Lupin meet during POA (and which you should go read immediately - start with "Snidgets", on FanFiction or LJ. Seriously. Stop reading this and go find it, I'll wait.) 
> 
> Anyway I couldn't get that idea out of my head, and wrote this to appease the plot bunny overlords.

She's a right little minx, this one.

A trickster and a brat. An ingratiating child, and a damn good witch.

She'll make a damn good Auror too, once she can stop tripping over her own two feet.

Kingsley introduced us at the cadet induction ceremony two years ago. I had found her overly curious and talkative, but it was that strange combination of overly curious and talkative that every once in a while results in a person who's also a good listener. She asked questions; I told old Auror stories; and we had got on quite well. Kingsley calls me her mentor, but the little shapeshifter has somehow wormed her way into the area of my chest that once held a human heart, and my brain stalls at the word _mentor_. I don't know that my ramblings about to mentoring, and anyway, her role feels more like _goddaughter_ than _protegee_.

She has also somehow currently wormed her way into my home, interrupting my peaceful retirement and I, being my usual, codgery self, hadn't had company in a while and had been pleased to see her. She never tires of stories. _The other Auror cadets tire a bit too easily_ , I think, _of listening to the old stories. They're called cautionary tales for a reason_.

"Of course they tire of them, Mad-Eye," she says, rolling her eyes, and it's only then I realize I've spoken aloud. "You tell the same stories twenty times a day."

I _harrumph_ in response. Her cheek reminds me, occasionally - unsettlingly - of Sirius Black. Her cousin. A good man, as I had thought. I had sworn I would never be so taken in again. Constant vigilance.

And yet. Here she is, trailing her fingertips along my mantelpiece, looking intently into the old photographs. For once, curiosity has lulled her into a contemplative silence.

She pauses at a group shot, pulls it down for a better look. "What's this, Mad-Eye?" I lean in to see which frame she's chosen.

 _Ah_. The Order of Phoenix. "The witches and wizards who fought Voldemort in the War," I say, and it's an evasive answer. I suppose the Order of the Phoenix isn't strictly secret, not anymore, but seeing as Dumbledore doesn't seem to think that Voldemort has truly gone, it seems prudent to leave it vague.

Her eyes widen anyway. She's not about to let anything get past her. "But they're not Aurors...?" she asks in surprise.

"Yeah, they're Aurors, some of them - there's me," I say, leaning in again, prodding at the old photograph with my wand. "And there're the Longbottoms." She knows their story. All the Aurors listen to _that_ story.

She watches the figures in the photograph a little while longer. If she recognizes James and Lily Potter, or Sirius Black, she doesn't say anything. Most of the little faces are smiling, happy. Oblivious.

"Who's this?" she asks suddenly. She's pointing at one of the men, a bit more subdued than the others, elbow propped up on the table, leaning his head into hand, like he's aware that no one is really looking at him and needn't sit up straight. The casual manner belies the true vigilance I know the man possesses.

"Remus Lupin," I answer, and the young man's eyes roll up, gazing out of the frame to meet my own, as though he can hear me. "The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts." Lupin had owled me himself only last week, told me how Dumbledore had sought him out, when the school's advertisement for the vacant professorship had yielded nothing.

She starts. "Really?" she asks, and looks curiously back at the young man now pulling a hand through unremarkable, if over-long, hair. I can see the thought process as it marches across her face (her Occlumency can use some work, as well) and I watch as she realizes that of course, the young man about her own age in the photograph must have aged in the dozen years since, and might reasonably be a professor.

I gesture to _The Evening Prophet_ , lying open to a middle spread on the coffee table. There's a small piece about Lupin's appointment, and a more recent photograph. She sets the frame back on the mantelpiece and lifts the _Prophet_ instead. "Oh," she says, very softly, looking down at the photograph of the older man, greyed and beaten by life and war, gazing almost defiantly at the camera.

I haven't seen Lupin often since the War, but if he's still anything like the fighter he was, then he'll make a fine Defense instructor. He had a patience for idiocy too, that I suspect will serve him well with the mewling first years. If it hadn't been for those damn Umbridge werewolf laws passed after the end of the War, I'd have convinced him to enter the Auror program himself, along with Kingsley.

A sad story, Lupin's.

I wonder how the last twelve years have treated him. I wonder how he's hardened. I wonder what he'd have thought of the minx, who's still strangely quiet, staring at black and white portrait. She's so green, untested, her life before her: Auror Examinations to pass, Dark Wizards to catch, and stories of her own to curate.

It's entirely possible that he would want nothing to do with Sirius' cousin. But something tells me that Lupin, who had always been so attracted to the young, the pure of heart, would find her as engaging as I do.

She looks up from the photograph, and her eyes are suddenly shrewd. There's very little about his background in the miniature bio, which refers to the man simply as 'an old friend of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore', and I can see her putting _twelve years_ and _no employment record_ together and coming up with _werewolf_.

"Mad-Eye..." she says, slowly, "d'you think Professor Lupin might be - "

"A good man," I interrupt gruffly and meet her eyes - with both of mine - squarely.

She meets my eyes - both of them - as boldly as ever, and I can see that she's considering something very hard. Finally, she nods, sets the paper back down on the table.

"He must be," she says, smoothing her fingers over the paper, "for you and Dumbledore to trust him so deeply."

Lupin is one of the few men left alive I still trust, and I realize in that moment that she has joined their ranks. She will do the right thing even when it means placing her own interests in jeopardy.

"Good lass," I mutter, softly.

It really is too bad they never got a chance to meet.

They'd have got on well, I think.


End file.
